Legislation to codify Michigan Capitol firearms ban to be introduced Thursday

Conservative protest at the Capitol against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, April 30, 2020 | Anna Liz Nichols

A pair of bills will be introduced Thursday in the Michigan Senate that would codify a ban on firearms at the Capitol in Lansing, state Sen. Dayna Polehanki (D-Livonia) told the Advance.

The legislation, sponsored by Polehanki and Rosemary Bayer (D-West Bloomfield), seeks to place into state law a decision by the Michigan State Capitol Commission, which voted unanimously in August to adopt new security procedures that banned guns at the Capitol, with an exemption for state lawmakers with concealed weapons permits. 

“I’d like to codify this into law in the event that maybe a Republican majority might happen sometime in the future,” Polehanki told the Michigan Advance on Wednesday afternoon. “And I think that it would be more difficult to repeal a law than to just change a commission’s policy because with the Capitol Commission, the membership often kind of mirrors whatever party is in power.”

The issue has special resonance for Polehanki, whose picture of armed gunmen in the Senate gallery on April 30, 2020 went viral. The armed men had been allowed inside the Capitol with sidearms and long guns while outside roughly 600 more angry right-wing protesters flooded the Capitol lawn, angry over Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s plan to expand a pandemic emergency declaration.

“You couldn’t be more of a fish in a barrel than the way that the Senate chamber and the House chamber are,” said Polehanki, adding that the architecture places the public gallery above the lawmakers’ desks.

“I was a new legislator, still,” she said. “I came from the high school classroom. So I went up to my colleagues and I said, ‘Is this normal?’ and the consensus was, ‘We’ve seen it before, but this has an intensity to it that we have not seen before.’ I saw one of them was kind of staring me down, so I decided to take a picture, and they saw me do it and I did. And I just thought, ‘Maybe I’ll tweet this out,’ and I did. And then it just immediately went viral.”

That picture not only went viral on social media, it became a visual exhibit during the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, with the armed protest referred to as an example of “a state level dress rehearsal for the siege of the U.S. Capitol,” on January 6, 2021.

Regardless, Polehanki says the proposed legislation is a needed guarantee nothing like happens again.

“I’d like to get this codified into law, so if anyone in the future decides that they’d like the Capitol to return to more of a ‘Wild, Wild West’ shooting gallery atmosphere, then they’re going to have to cast votes and put their names on record to repeal that,” she said.

Polehanki’s bill, SB 857, would ban the concealed carrying of guns at the Capitol, as well as the Binsfeld Senate Office Building and the Anderson House Office Building, while Bayer’s would ban open carry in those locations. However, as with the Capitol Commission rules, the proposed legislation does provide an exception for state lawmakers with concealed weapons permits.

“I left that in the bill because if and when the bill passes into law, it’s important to me that any future legislature, in which Republicans retake the majority, does not have a reason to overturn it,” she said. “I know that legislator concealed carry is important to my Republican colleagues [and] hasn’t been a problem, so I just left it in. I don’t want to give anyone a reason to vote no.”

Sen. Dayna Polehanki

Current procedures also allow on-duty employees of private security companies contracted by the state to provide protection to state officials, and on duty employees of the Michigan Supreme Court or the Michigan Court of Appeals to carry a concealed pistol if they have a valid CPL and are authorized by their employer to carry a firearm. The ban does not apply to members of Capitol security, law enforcement officers and other on-duty state security employees.

When asked if she thought she and Bayer could draw any Republicans to vote on the bills, Polehanki was optimistic, yet also realistic.

“I think the way the bill is, it’s hard to say no to this,” she said. “I don’t understand how anyone can go back to their district and say, ‘I voted no on this.’ Why? Will I get any Republicans on board? I have no idea. I hope so, but I don’t know.”

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